GoldenEye: Special Edition (1995)

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General		Extras
Category	Bond	Main Menu Introduction Main Menu Audio & Animation Featurette-The World Of 007 Audio Commentary-Martin Campbell (Director) & Michael G. Wilson (Producer) Featurette-The GoldenEye Video Journal Featurette-Promotional Featurette Music Video-GoldenEye-Tina Turner Trailer-2 TV Spots-12
Rating
Year Of Production	1995
Running Time	124:24
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (63:23)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Martin Campbell
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Pierce Brosnan Sean Bean Izabella Scorupco Famke Janssen Tcheky Karyo
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$39.95	Music	Eric Serra

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	French Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Hungarian Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	French Italian English Hungarian Dutch	Smoking	Yes, occasionally
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes, and many of them are pointed out in the commentary
		Action In or After Credits	No

    The film begins with James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) infiltrating the Arkangel Chemical Weapons Facility within an unspecified part of the Soviet Union, during the year 1989. Upon gaining entry to the facility, he is met by Agent 006, or Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean), as he was known at birth. When Bond and Trevelyan are detected in the facility, they proceed to arm a series of explosives, and confront a Soviet Colonel named Arkady Ourumov (Gottfried John). Bond manages to escape with his life, but Trevelyan is killed by Ourumov, an event that bothers Bond during the six years that pass between this introduction and the point where the story picks up.

    The story picks up with Bond speeding through a series of mountains in a sports car, with a psychologist who screams her fool head off all the way. "I enjoy a spirited ride as much as the next girl," she says, so along comes the proverbial Next Girl in the form of former Soviet fighter pilot Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen), who proceeds to race with Bond in one of the film's lighter moments. After meeting with Onatopp once more in a casino, he is brushed off by her in favour of a Navy Admiral by the name of Chuck Farrell (Billy J. Mitchell). This is not such a bad thing for Bond, however, as Onatopp proceeds to crush Chuck to death between her thighs while an accomplice steals his Navy credentials card. Shortly thereafter, Onatopp and this same so-far unidentified fellow proceed to steal the Tiger helicopter prototype that the Navy is exhibiting the following day.

    Of course, it is no coincidence that this particular helicopter is designed to be immune from electromagnetic pulses, a new type of first-strike weapon that has been secretly researched by both the American and Russian governments. While MI6 has it that the Russians lack the finance to make this weaponry viable, the existence of a weapons control centre in the Russian province of Severnaya proves otherwise. Within the Severnaya weapons facility, business is going on much as usual, with Natalya Simonova (Izabella Scorupco) and computer nerd in extremis Boris Grishenko (Alan Cumming) getting on each other's nerves. When Boris steps outside for a cigarette, however, the stolen Tiger helicopter lands in front of him, with Onatopp and Ourumov emerging and killing nearly everyone within the facility before using one of the GoldenEye satellites to destroy it. Bond is then recalled to MI6 headquarters, where he meets with the new Moneypenny (Samantha Bond) and the new M (Judi Dench). M proceeds to set Bond on a course of action common to fourteen of the previous sixteen Bond episodes: find out who stole GoldenEye, stop them from doing whatever it is they plan on doing with it, and get as many women in the sack as is possible while doing so, all without wrinkling his suit. His first point of reference is that Onatopp and Ourumov have links with the Russian crime syndicate called Janus, led by a man who may indeed turn out to be more than a match for our favourite British secret agent.

    As I have mentioned, this film is definitely not original in comparison to the other eighteen incarnations of the Bond franchise, but what sets this one apart is some brilliant casting. Pierce Brosnan is the best Bond the series has had since Sean Connery, and is in some ways superior because he behaves more like a real secret agent than a younger version of Hugh Hefner. Famke Janssen is without a shadow of doubt the best Bond Girl since the great Diana Rigg, and the inclusion of Sean Bean as an old colleague gives the best insight into Bond as a human being since On Her Majesty's Secret Service. If Roger Moore's horrible tenure as James Bond put you off the franchise because of his wooden acting and the awfully silly nature of the stories, then GoldenEye is just the thing you need to prove to yourself and others that a Bond film can be intelligent, witty, and believeable.

    One last important note: As Bond fans of all walks and alignments will be well aware, gadget-meister Desmond Lleweyn, or Q as the character is called, passed away shortly after the theatrical release of the nineteenth Bond episode, The World Is Not Enough. From what I have been able to gather, the replacement shown in the same film, played by John Cleese at his usual worst, will in fact be present in the twentieth episode. Out of respect for Desmond and sickness of John playing the same character over and over, I urge United Artists to stop it with this schtick immediately so that Bond 20 will at least be watchable.

Video

    The transfer is presented in the proper aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and it is 16x9 Enhanced. Words cannot express how vital these two elements alone are to proper enjoyment of this film, which looks positively horrible when cropped to match the outdated ratio of old television screens. Numerous snippets of footage from the film in the featurettes included on the disc are either cropped to approximately 1.85:1, or even 1.33:1, and it looks positively horrible by comparison.

    The sharpness of this transfer is such that even with the tight compression, details leap off the screen with great clarity. The shadow detail of the transfer is great, with plenty of subtle steps between the focal point of each shot and the darker sections. The revealing of an actor's face at 65:19 is so impeccably captured that it makes me pity the poor souls who try to experience this sequence on the Very Hazy System. There is no low-level noise, and film grain is not an issue at all here. This is one area where this new Special Edition improves upon the original release of GoldenEye: in the original DVD, the tight compression occasionally caused some backgrounds to look a little grainy or noisy. No such problems exist with this DVD, which is an illustration of why Michael D's recipe for the perfect DVD specifies RSDL formatting.

    The colours of the film's locations vary from being bright and vivid during the scenes in Cuba and MI6 headquarters, to dull and drab during the scenes in the new Russia. The transfer captures these artistic choices (which are pretty much a reflection of how the shooting locations would have looked, anyway) without any compromises or flaws, particularly during the opening sequence in the Arkangel facility and the credits, both of which throw enough colours at the viewer to keep their eyes busy with the mere detail of processing colour.

    MPEG artefacts were not a problem for this transfer, thanks to the relatively pristine state of the source material and the RSDL formatting, resulting in a transfer that rides roughshod over the original release. In particular, the backgrounds and minor details of the transfer have a much smoother and finer look, with Pierce Brosnan's exchange with Izabella Scorupco at 83:56 being a great example. Film-to-video artefacts were extremely mild at the worst of times, with only very occasional instances of shimmering that were small and difficult to notice. The worst one I noticed was at 30:35, during Gottfried John's and Famke Janssen's entry into the Severnaya facility, and this is very much a blink-and-you'll-miss it artefact. Film artefacts consisted of the occasional small mark on the transfer, none of which were particularly noticeable, let alone intrusive.

    This disc makes use of the RSDL format, and a great deal of this Special Edition's advantages over the original release of GoldenEye can be associated with this fact. The layer change takes place between Chapters 16 and 17, at 63:23, and is very brief, although the slight interruption in the sound makes it a little obvious.

Audio

    There are five soundtracks on this DVD: a French dub in Dolby Digital 5.1, an Italian dub in Dolby Digital 5.1, the original English dialogue in Dolby Digital 5.1, a Hungarian dub in Dolby Digital 2.0 with surround-encoding, and an English audio commentary in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo. I listened to the original English dialogue and the English audio commentary.

    The dialogue is clear and easy to understand at almost all times, although the obviously fake Russian accents put on by such actors as Gottfried John did get in the way on some occasions. This was only a problem with one or two words here and there, and it won't cause you to lose any sleep over what is being said at any point. It is interesting to note that none of the actors who play Russians in this film even come close to being of Russian origin, although Famke Janssen's Dutch accent makes a perfectly acceptable substitute. There were no discernable problems with audio sync, either.

    The score music in this film is credited to Eric Serra, and I am still dumbfounded by hardcore Bond fans and their criticism of it, in light of the utterly clichéd and ridiculous score provided for Licence To Kill. Granted, this score has about as much subtlety as a nuclear strike upon an outdoor toilet, but that's par for the course where this saga is concerned. It won't knock the score from On Her Majesty's Secret Service off its perch any time soon, but people who tell you that this score is not adequate really need to lighten up and accept that things change.

    The surround channels are aggressively utilized by the soundtrack in order to support the sounds of such outlandish special effects as the GoldenEye blasts, as well as some rather hilarious battle sequences and car chases. Occasionally, the sound field would become extremely frontal in nature, Bond's meeting with Janus being a notable instance, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that this is how the makers intended this sequence to sound. For ninety-five percent of the film's length, the sound field provides an immersive listening experience which puts the listener right in the middle of the action.

    The subwoofer had a whale of a time supporting the lower registers of the soundtrack, with explosions, tanks, trains, and the bass riffs in the theme song all having a life of their own in the low frequency channel. Overall, this is one of the most ideal audio transfers for demonstration purposes.

Menu

Audio Commentary - Martin Campbell (Director) & Michael G. Wilson (Producer)

Featurette - The World Of 007: A Documentary

Featurette - The GoldenEye Video Journal

Promotional Featurette

Music Video - Tina Turner: GoldenEye

Theatrical Trailers (2)

TV Spots (12)

Booklet

    There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.

    The video transfer is immaculate, in every way an improvement over the original DVD release.

    The audio transfer is a reference example of how a film of this kind should sound in the home environment, and definite demonstration material.

    The extras are comprehensive and of great quality.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall